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When Skins first premiered on E4 in 2007, it was unlike anything else on television. Created by Bryan Elsley and his son, Jamie Brittain, it was a show about young people written (mostly) by young people – a truthful, if comically exaggerated, exploration of what it meant to be 18, anxious and horny. Kiss Me First, Elsley’s new Channel 4 drama, feels in certain ways like a spiritual successor – a Skins for the social media age – but an altogether more melancholy and less endearing one. In Skins the teenagers tended to crack gradually, here they were broken from the beginning.

Loosely adapted from the young adult novel by Lottie Moggach, Kiss Me First follows both the real and virtual life of Leila (Tallulah Haddon), a reclusive 17 year-old who’s been left adrift, grieving and penniless, in the wake of her mother’s death.

As an escape, she has become a dedicated fan of Azana, a virtual reality world in which gamers can wage war, fight in hand-to-hand combat, soar through the skies, or simply talk. All of which was animated in impressive, if slightly cartoonish CGI, blended with live-action. In one scene, we saw a dazzlingly bright and exciting battle in Azana intercut with the reality of Leila sitting alone in a VR headset, gesturing ridiculously in her drab bedroom. As many gamers already know, it is impossible to look cool in a VR headset.

The obvious comparison is Steven Spielberg’s recently released virtual reality movie Ready Player One. But its menu of pop-culture references offers nothing as nourishing as Kiss Me First’s atmosphere of angst and despair – sold through the warm, golden hour feel of its colour grading, and a performance from newcomer Haddon that was as haunted as it was haunting, as though grief has made her skin uncomfortable to wear. This discomfort worked especially well when it met the broad comedy of Leila’s new flatmate, the aspiring-but-awful actor Jonty (Matthew Aubrey), or the free-spirit hedonism of her new best friend Tess (Simona Brown), who Leila met after she discovered the Red Pill, a secret group of “losers” hidden away in Azana.

In Kiss Me First, Red Pill refers to the original meaning of the phrase, as a reference to the idea of truth over ignorance from the 1999 sci-fi film The Matrix, but the term has also seen itself co-opted in recent years by a sinister men’s rights group on Reddit. Bizarrely, the latter seems more relevant. Secluded in a digital paradise, Azana’s Red Pill is a hodgepodge of damaged youth, who were introduced inelegantly to Leila through dialogue like “we’re f–-ed up” and “we’re unusual” – lines that probably could have been nailed easily through live-action, but came across clunky in animation.

Tallulah Haddon as LeilaCredit:
Channel 4

Their leader was the creepy, all-powerful Adrian (Matthew Beard), who lured in the vulnerable with a promise of belonging, with outlawed technology (called “sense bands”) that allows members to touch and feel the virtual world, and then grooming them to kill themselves.

Adrian’s motives, much like a lot of things in this opener, were enigmatic and vague, giving us a lot of mystery but leaving little to grasp on to. This is perhaps a symptom of that before-mentioned melancholy, which imbues the show with a pace that burns thick and slow, suggesting the series’ potential rather than stating it outright. As such, it’s too early to tell how astute its observations about online relationships will be, how well it handles the friendship (and perhaps romance) between Leila and Tess, or whether the animation of Azana will end up being the show’s blessing or its curse.

But not to worry – such set-up problems are common of first episodes. Well, not Skins – its first episode was a masterclass in establishing its concept, grabbing your attention, earning your repeat investment. But Kiss Me First is not Skins. It is something yet to reveal itself.